We know still less, if possible, of
Sabellian art; but that of course by no means warrants the inference
that it was inferior to that of the neighbouring stocks. On the
contrary, it may be conjectured from what we otherwise know of
the character of the three chief races of Italy, that in artistic
gifts the Samnites approached nearest to the Greeks and the
Etruscans were farthest removed from them; and a sort of confirmation
of this hypothesis is furnished by the fact, that the most gifted
and most original of the Roman poets, such as Naevius, Ennius,
Lucilius, and Horace, belonged to the Samnite lands, whereas
Etruria has almost no representatives in Roman literature except
the Arretine Maecenas, the most insufferable of all heart-withered
and affected(17) court-poets, and the Volaterran Persius, the true
ideal of a conceited and languid, poetry-smitten, youth.

17. Literally "word-crisping," in allusion to the -calamistri
Maecenatis-.